Egyptians again descend on Tahrir Square to protest President Morsi's power grab

CAIRO — Hundreds of demonstrators were in Cairo’s Tahrir Square for a sixth day on Wednesday to demand that President Mohammed Morsi rescind a decree they say gives him dictatorial powers, and two of Egypt’s top courts stopped work in protest.

But in a move that one Muslim Brotherhood official said could help resolve the worst crisis of Mursi’s five-month presidency, the assembly drawing up a new constitution said it would complete work on a final draft on Wednesday.

The official said the final draft could go to a popular referendum by mid-December. If approved it would cancel the constitutional declaration that extended Mursi’s powers and sparked street protests that drew tens of thousands on Tuesday. Brotherhood and other Islamists have called for a rally backing the president on Saturday.

“We will start now and finish today, God willing,” Hossam el-Gheriyani, the constituent assembly speaker, said at the start of a meeting to finalize drafting the constitution.

Three assembly members said a vote on the draft by the assembly was planned for Thursday.

Many liberals and other opponents of Mursi have walked out of the constituent assembly, which is dominated by Islamists, saying their voices are not being heard.

Once drafted, the constitution will go to Mursi for approval, and he must then put it to a popular referendum within 15 days, which could mean the plebiscite would be held by mid-December.

The move immediately drew scorn from leading Egyptian opposition figure Amr Moussa, a former Arab League chief.

“This is nonsensical and one of the steps that shouldn’t be taken, given the background of anger and resentment to the current constitutional assembly,” he told Reuters.

Adding to the tension, Egypt’s Cassation and Appeals courts said they would suspend their work until the constitutional court rules on the decree.

The judiciary, largely unreformed since the popular uprising that unseated Mursi’s autocratic predecessor Hosni Mubarak, was seen as a major target in the decree issued last Thursday, which extended his powers and put his decisions temporarily beyond legal challenge. The decree also protected the constituent assembly from judicial oversight, fending off court cases that call for it to be dissolved.

“The president wants to create a new dictatorship,” said 38-year-old Mohamed Sayyed Ahmed in Tahrir. He has not had a job for two years and is one of many in the square who are as angry over economic hardship as they are about Mursi’s actions.

“We want the scrapping of the constitutional declaration and the constituent assembly, so a new one is created representing all the people and not just one section,” he said.

Showing the depth of distrust of Mursi in parts of the judiciary, a spokesman for the Supreme Constitutional Court, which earlier this year declared void the Islamist-led parliament, said it felt under attack by the president.

In a speech on Friday, Mursi praised the judiciary as a whole but referred to corrupt elements he aimed to weed out.

“The really sad thing that has pained the members of this court is when the president of the republic joined, in a painful surprise, the campaign of continuous attack on the Constitutional Court,” said the spokesman Maher Samy.

Senior judges have been negotiating with Mursi about how to restrict his new powers.

Mursi’s administration insists that his actions were aimed at breaking a political logjam to push Egypt more swiftly towards democracy, an assertion his opponents dismiss.

The West worries about turbulence in a nation that has a peace treaty with Israel and is now ruled by Islamists they long kept at arms length. The United States, a big donor to Egypt’s military, has called for “peaceful democratic dialogue”.

Two people have been killed in violence since the decree, while low-level clashes between protesters and police have gone on for days near Tahrir. Violence has flared in other cities.

Trying to ease tensions with judges, Mursi said elements of his decree giving his decisions immunity applied only to matters of “sovereign” importance, a compromise suggested by the judges.

That should limit it to issues such as declaring war, but experts said there was much room for interpretation. The judges themselves are divided, and the broader judiciary has yet to back the compromise. Some have gone on strike over the decree.

A constitution must be in place before a new parliament can be elected, and until that time Mursi holds both executive and legislative powers. An election could take place in early 2013.

One presidential source said Mursi wanted to re-make the Supreme Constitutional Court after it declared the parliament void, which led to its dissolution by the then ruling military.

Both Islamists and their opponents broadly agree that the judiciary needs reform, but Mursi’s rivals oppose his methods.

Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Marwa Awad; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Will Waterman